Congratz to the new mods For now, sure people can make applications but we probably will not be accepting any mods for some time. It was fit to expand the minimized staff body, and those two earned it.

As some of you may have noticed lately many ban's have been made because of stealing. With that being said you must re-lock all of you chests, if the top lign of your lockette sign doesn't say [private] your at risk of being stolen from!

It is with uncertainty and nostalgia that I sadly write this article, but it nonetheless must be written. I will begin with my story of ObsidianCraft, and conclude with my ideals for the future. I’ll attempt to minimize the detail for length’s sake, but I strongly urge you to read to the end.

A little over three years ago, my friends persuaded me to join ObsidianCraft and play with them. Up until that point, I had never really played multiplayer Minecraft. To make a very long, roller coaster of a story short, I fell in love with the server. I played on loads of others over the years, but none had the same effect as OC.

I became staff, and the server was making vast improvements, reaching feats that multiplayer Minecraft had never seen before. The already growing server hit a pot of gold when it released the ObsidianCraft Network in late spring, 2012. Player numbers jumped from 1-200 to 7-800 in the span of a few weeks. With four exceptional servers on an exceptional network, we had the best to offer out of any server.

Don4of4, the owner and manager of our network, was pretty active with us, enjoying running the server as we enjoyed administrating it and playing it. ObsidianCraft was the first server of its kind, offering a cloud network with a variety of server types to fit everyone’s playing needs. This is what brought on the server’s “golden age.”

Unfortunately, the rest of the story is what you are most familiar with. As Don4of4 went on with his life he gradually had less time for the server and eventually lost interest in it entirely. During that time span, he did less and less for the server. We went from a center of Minecraft innovation to just another server that consistently had what everyone else had.

With Don4of4’s increasing inactivity and administrators only having so much power, ObsidianCraft started to decline. Other servers were now releasing new ideas to Minecraft that had never been seen before, much like we had in 2012. Unfortunately, we weren’t advancing in any way with those servers. With minimal changes, we chugged along the same path we’d been on. This worked for a while, with a consistent stream of new and leaving players for almost a year. Unfortunately, as with all things old, we slowly started to drop.

It was many months later, with the server struggling up and down from 10 to 40 players that TheMeq and I (wesley27) begged Don4of4 to give us the reigns to the server. Surprisingly happy to get it off his shoulders, we made an agreement where he would provide the means for the server, and we would manage and administrate it. Money made from ObsidianCraft had been saved and was paying for the server, and we agreed that that’s all it would ever do.

TheMeq and I went down a bumpy road trying to revive a dying server. We made many attempts to try and give ObsidianCraft those new features that other servers had. Sometimes they were successful, but we didn’t have the support for them to take off. We were too late, in a sense, and too far behind other servers. Nonetheless, we still tried, and at one point put ObsidianCraft back up at a 90 player average. That was our finest hour, but it ended after a month or so and the decline resumed.

Over time, we had many ups and downs that would probably average out to about a 20-30 player base. Unfortunately, we now come to the time where ObsidianCraft has nearly completely lost its players, and we are near an end to the road.

If you have read this far, I want to thank you for going through my quick recap of ObsidianCraft history. People have often asked me what happened to OC, why are there so few players, is it dead. Well, hopefully you can now understand what happened, from the perspective of a staff member who witnessed everything.

So, finally, we come to the present day. Are we near the end? That’s everyone’s obvious question. To answer you, I can simply say that I don’t know. As you all know, TheMeq and almost all other staff members have resigned, leaving me as the sole owner of the server. I respect TheMeq’s decision, and he is still by far one of the greatest friends I have met; I am lucky to have been acquainted with him, even if he lives 3,636 miles away.

So is this it, is ObsidianCraft closing? I hope not. People told me two years ago that we would be dead by Easter. Rude ones even bet on times for our closure. I’m glad to say that we decently made our way through almost two more years.

Well, I guess I should quit stalling. Is ObsidianCraft shutting down? As the acting owner of ObsidianCraft, I tell you that I have no plans of shutting the server down. Why? I’m aware that the server is in a near completely failed state, but I won’t completely give up on it. Sure, the server is a free time activity for me, but I still love it. Isn’t that where we all started? Playing on the server in our free time for some fun?

So, I don’t plan to shut the server down. I don’t plan to disappoint those of you who still play and have faith in us. Regardless of her state, ObsidianCraft will chug on as long as she can. It is my duty to warn you that OC’s closure is only 50% in my control. The provider, if sees fit, still has the power over me to shut her down. But that won’t stop me from trying my best to keep her afloat.

ObsidianCraft may be at an all-time low, and I may not have the time to put my all in to making her fly. Nonetheless, that will not stop me from keeping her up for the sole reason of your enjoyment. There may not be many of you players left, but I know that the few that remain still enjoy the server that ObsidianCraft has become. That you don’t care about the player count or popularity, and just enjoy the server, is reason enough to keep her going.

So I’ll say again. Whatever happens, happens. But I have no intention of shutting ObsidianCraft down.

I’ve played on a lot of servers over the years, and been through a lot of hell with ObsidianCraft. But I fell in love, and I had to stay. I started as a greyname just like all of you, and now I’m nostalgically making a post I never dreamed of. Regardless of the server’s state in the future, there is one thing about ObsidianCraft that I will always stand by and never forget. It is a sole reason that the server is worth saving:

It is the community, which, regardless of all the drama and negative persons it dealt with, always remained intact, together, and enjoyable. To this date, and probably eternity, I will stand behind the belief that no other Minecraft server, regardless of players and popularity, has ever had a community as successful, kind, bonded, and sweet as ObsidianCraft’s.

For that ideal, the experiences, love, care, and friendship that you all have shared with me for the past three years, I thank you, and I can never thank you enough.

Hello boys and girls! The ObsidianCraft Prison server is now open for alpha testing, now please note, the server is nowhere near finished, there is still so much to do, but I figured I would get more done, if people nagged me about it. The blocks for each mine may need tweaking and the prices will also need tweaking, there is also no free world yet.

I bring you this now as an Alpha as I will be off work for the first week of November when I can hopefully push this into Beta and people can start enjoying it more.

Join the server by typing "/prison" or "/server prison" from whichever server you are currently on. If you find any bugs or issues, post in the ObsidianCraft Prison forum your issues and ideas!

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